Chamber and committees

We need to consider other things. In a previous response to a member, I referenced my concern about the college sector more generally and the precarious nature of the sector, particularly in recent years. Baking in some of the financial challenge that we have across Government makes the situation even more challenging for the sector.

I am also conscious of the role that our college sector plays for some our most vulnerable young people. It has a reach that other parts of the education sector do not, and we in the Government need to be mindful of that. I am keen that, through the reform process, we better understand that.

Although I understand that the committee took evidence from Mr Dey on that issue last week—and I will shortly give evidence on school reform—we must have a better connection between the two. They currently feel disparate, which is why I have reformed some of the governance arrangements. You might think that that is a tweak—“Who cares, cabinet secretary? That is not going to deliver real change on the ground”—but I think that it is important that we have a more joined-up approach to how we deliver our education system. That delivery model was meant to be part of the narrative and rhetoric around curriculum for excellence, yet we are still siloed in how we think about the delivery of school education and higher education.

I know that Mr Dey spoke last week about opportunities for reform, particularly for colleges. That is not just about Ms Maguire’s point on flexibilities, and the colleges recognise that. The opportunities include, for example, the potential for colleges to take more of a leading role in the delivery of modern apprenticeships. I heard Mr Dey speak to some of that last week. That colleges-first model would be quite a shift for the sector in the future, but perhaps there is an opportunity, through some of that work on reform, to better support the sustainability of the sector. I suppose that that goes back to Ms Duncan-Glancy’s point that there is no additionality here—there is not, but we need to look at how we work smarter in the future to help protect that sustainability.

A number of colleges are having a challenging time. I know that the SFC is working with them directly on that. I think that, in the evidence session last week, Mr Dey spoke about the colleges that the SFC has been supporting directly. It does that anyway, without ministers getting involved, but we need to be mindful of this becoming more of a challenge for our colleges sector in the current financial climate. I think that reform and the flexibilities that we have previously mentioned offer an opportunity and a route forward.

Absolutely. That is why the careers service and SDS have a key role to play in that endeavour, and it is also why we cannot divorce school reform from the wider skills agenda on which Mr Dey is leading.

Yes. AI gives us a number of opportunities. The committee has written to me specifically on that and I will provide a substantive response in my written reply.

In her review, Professor Hayward made a number of recommendations about AI. In my conversations with Graham Donaldson during the summer, we spoke about how AI could be used in the future to reduce teacher workload. We need to explore such things through reform. Timetabling is an extremely political subject for any secondary school teacher that the committee may speak to. In a school that I worked in formerly, we used to joke that a depute was locked in a cupboard for a week to write the timetable, because it was such a stressful job to pull all of that information together. I am keen to explore any opportunities for using AI, particularly in relation to reducing teacher workload.

I see a role for Education Scotland in that. I know that the committee took evidence from Ollie Bray on AI. Education Scotland should have a key role to play in developing guidance that can help to reduce teacher workload, whether that is timetabling or other work that AI might be able to support.

I feel as though we are at the beginning of our journey with AI, and it changes every day. Qualifications reform will need to be developed in response to some of that change, because it is so fast paced. We can learn a lot from the university sector, too. I will be happy to give a substantive response to the committee on AI specifically.

But that is the reality at the current time, is it not?

I am not going to use my rusty higher French to respond to Mr Kerr—

Ha! I believe that Mr Rennie has attempted to set a trap for me in asking about what I think is wrong with Scottish education.

I think that there are many strengths in Scottish education. In 2015—the year prior to the one that Mr Rennie cites—I was in the classroom, so I went through the most recent curriculum reform iteration as a teacher. We need to learn lessons from the implementation of curriculum for excellence in the implementation of any changes to the current qualifications, because there are things that we should do differently in future. We need to engage the profession in that and create time for the profession to be fully engaged.

I do not necessarily think that there are things wrong with Scottish education, though I would accept that there are challenges. We see that in the programme for international student assessment data that was published at the end of last year. I met Professor Graham Donaldson, whom the committee will be well acquainted with, just after my appointment in the summer last year. We talked about some of the challenges in relation to broad general education and the senior phase.

One thing that I think is unresolved from curriculum reform in Scotland is the transition from BGE and the straight-through curriculum to the senior phase. There is a disconnect. I argue, from a classroom teacher or head of department level, that part of that is about the hours that are allocated to courses. It does not work when you timetable at the current time, so you break the broad general education to deliver more courses. There is variation in the system, and I think that the committee might have taken evidence on that. Certainly, in the previous session of Parliament, Mr Greer and I heard evidence on the number of courses that are delivered in S4.

I have a report on my desk from Professor Louise Hayward, who talks about entitlements in the system. That is a challenge to Government that we need to resolve through reform. Right now, we do not have entitlements; the number of subjects that are delivered in schools varies across the board, and we need to use reform to address and improve that.

I think that we all accept that, and we can see it. I may pass over to Clare Hicks on this, but part of the challenge is around how we measure performance. The national improvement framework that we have in Government considers a broader range of measures than local authorities consider. The framework will take into account the five highers measure, I think. There is a bit of a disconnect there, which we are working to resolve. I will pass to Clare on the specific point about the variation.

There is a bit of a disconnect between some of the arguments around a culture of performativity and PISA scores. I have to be honest with the committee: PISA is a raw data set that tells the Government a very challenging story. If we are moving away from a culture of performativity, do I have to ignore PISA scores? I do not think so. That data set tells me a story that I need to respond to—and that is one of the reasons why we have rejoined other international surveys that we had previously not been part of for a number of years, which will give me more data.

I think that, during the previous education debate in the chamber, I mentioned the role of PISA and its history. An American President in the 1980s was looking for objective data from the states on education performance. That is the origin of PISA, which is about driving improvement. I do not think that we should necessarily ignore the culture of performativity. I hear about some of the challenge, but we need to improve and PISA gives us a data set to support improvement. That is why we are investing in the other surveys, and it is why we need to engage in the substantive detail—as do local authorities regarding their responsibilities for outcomes for young people.

I do not think that the current reforms mirror those that existed in 2016—forgive me, I was not in post at that time. We are working in a completely different space to that which existed when I was first elected, in 2016, and when Mr Swinney, I think, brought forward those changes. We live in a post-pandemic world, and I tried to contextualise some of the challenge that we face in Scotland by saying that it is not unique to us.

Mr Rennie asked why we are uniquely falling down the international league tables, as it were, in relation to the PISA data that was published last year. We are not unique. When it comes to comparable countries, that was the Covid edition. However, in my statement to the Parliament, I made it very clear that we need to turn that trajectory around.